MAKING THE MOST OF YOUR UNDERGRADUATE YEARS

This section will help you focus on your goals for college and
career.

What do you want from your college experience? What do you want from
your major?What do you want from your career? Chances are,
you will find your college experience more rewarding and you will be a
more successful student if you give some serious thought to these questions.
Knowing why you are in school helps you see see the relevance between what
you are doing in school and how this will serve you later--either on the
job or in graduate school. Seeing these connections motivates you to do
well. If you can develop clear educational and career goals early in your
college experience, this can have a number of important pay-offs. For example,
you'll have more time to identify and program into your schedule those
courses that will serve you well and those volunteer and extracurricular
activities that will help you develop useful skills. Also, if you've gotten
off to a bad start grade-wise, the more terms you'll have to earn high
grades to offset the low ones.

These are all complex questions so you shouldn't get discouraged if
you can't come up with immediate answers. It may be a case of your needing
more information before you can know what you want. If so, just put the
questions on the "back burner" as you review the information on this site.
Hopefully, what you learn here will guide you to the answers you seek.

If you've familiarized yourself with the materials on this site and
done some serious reflection on your educational and career goals and you're
still feeling confused, I'd suggest making an appointment for some career
counseling at the Career Services Office on your campus. You might also
consider making an appointment at the Counseling Center to take some occupational
interest tests. Another option is to take some time off from school and
get some job experience. Then, once you know why you want to go to college,
you should be much more interested in your classes and motivated to do
well.

To make the most of your undergraduate years, you must know what courses
and extracurricular experiences will help you develop the knowledge and
skills you'll need for later success. One way to get a handle on this issue
is to ask prospective employers what types of skills they want prospective
employees to have. Based on this idea, Dr. Jan Kennedy and I developed
two matching hand-outs. By doing a little research, we were able to identify
eight different skills that employers are looking for in their employees
("Skills Employers Seek"). A companion hand-out
lists courses in the core curriculum (those required for all majors), major,
and minor that should help you develop these critical skills ("Suggested
Courses to Develop Skills Employers Seek").

(Note: In our Careers in Psychology course, we have students complete
a four-year, term-by-term course plan that details all the courses they
have taken and all those they plan to take and, if known, in what sequence.
This is a useful way to determine whether you'll be able to take all the
courses you want, in their necessary sequences, before graduation. If your
department has an advising check-sheet for your major/degree, you can work
from this form. A college catalog for the year in which you entered is
another helpful resource for this exercise.)

APA-style reference for this page:

Lloyd, M. A. (1997, August 28). Making the most of your undergraduate
years. [Online]. Available: http://www.psywww.com/careers/most.htm.